[env-trinity] NY Times: Fishless in Seattle

Fri Sep 27 10:02:25 PDT 2013

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 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> Opinionator - A Gathering of
Opinion From Around the Web

September 26, 2013, 9:00 pm 

Fishless in Seattle

By  <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/timothy-egan/> TIMOTHY EGAN

SEATTLE - Not long ago, dispirited by national politics mired in mean and a
hopeless hometown baseball team, I sought a long day's refuge in the natural
world. But it was not a frozen flank of Mount Rainier or an island in the
inland sea that gave me the break I was looking for. It was an overcrowded
perch in the heart of a metro area of nearly three million people.

The return of the wild - oysters in the Bronx River, healthy urban fish, a
pure strain of bison newly introduced to Indian country in Montana - is one
of the narratives of hope in the dark days of a country held hostage by
Senator Ted Cruz and his party of nihilists.

All month, salmon have been coursing through my city. Fat cohos, athletic
pinks, late-season sockeyes, even a chinook or two - these fish are driven
by a biological imperative to swim in from the ocean for a final fling in
fresh water. It doesn't matter how many skyscrapers, stadiums or highways
they have to pass to get to the pools of their birth, salmon in the fall
have a single purpose: spawn and die.

This year, there are millions of them. Chinook, the mighty kings, are
returning to the Columbia River in numbers not seen in decades. The run of
pink salmon in Puget Sound and surrounding waters is pegged at six million
or so. For this miracle of restoration, we owe decades of vigilance,
patience and investment in tomorrow - precisely the things lacking in the
other Washington.

As Teddy Roosevelt sought to preserve big, wild animals in order to get a
chance to kill them, I've always wanted to save the salmon so I can eat
them, in season, on a whim, after grilling them, rubbed with olive oil.

At the outdoor store, I waded through aisles of camouflaged accessories and
vials of urine taken from elk in heat (a "sexual attractant" used by
hunters). In the fishing compound, I found my pink salmon lures and a bought
a razor-sharp knife.

Pink salmon return every other year. They are feisty, despite being the
smallest of the five Pacific salmon species. They are not as tasty as other
salmon, unless you bleed them immediately and cook them the same day. 

At dawn, I made my way through traffic, oblivious to the backups, the
snarls, the caffeinated stares of commuters. Is there a better feeling in
the world than going fishing when everyone else is going to work?

I found a little bridge over the Duwamish Waterway, a point where an
industrial part of Puget Sound meets a hard-working river. Upstream are
airplane factories, cement plants, countless rusted hulks and, eventually,
some cold clean water for salmon. 

The bridge was jammed, combat fishing. Peaceful it was not, hard by the
growls of a city moving through its labors. This estuary was once a fishing
ground for Chief Seattle's people, the Duwamish, who had a saying known to
other natives: when the tide is out, the table is set. 

For much of the 20th century, the table was overwhelmed by industrial
pollutants. It's cleaner now, though you'd never want to eat anything that
fed off the bottom. Salmon merely pass through and stop eating once they hit
fresh water.

>From the bridge, I elbowed my way to position. The surface of the water was
alive with leapers, jumping as they moved into the Duwamish. People were
pulling in pinks right and left. I made a dozen or more casts until I got
the tug I was looking for. I let out a shout, pulled and reeled. Below, I
saw my fish - a real beauty. But just a few feet from the bridge, I lost
him. 

Down below was a rock perch, still crowded, but closer to the water. I found
a spot. Next to me, little kids were pulling in pinks. Shouldn't you be in
school? Old women were landing them. I went fishless for an hour. 

How long would this ritual be a regular joy of autumn? At our end, we need
clean water. But the open ocean, where salmon spend most of their lives, is
something no one city, no one nation can control. 

The seas are absorbing 20 trillion pounds of CO2 a year, touching almost
every part of the marine food chain, The
<http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-p
erilous-turn-overview/> Seattle Times reported in an exhaustive series on
the "Pacific's perilous turn." The acidic waters are killing oysters and
mussels and could imperil the pollock used by McDonald's in fish sticks. Sea
butterflies, the tiny shelled creatures that make up nearly half the diet of
pink salmon, are vulnerable. It doesn't take much for carbon from a coal
plant in China to make its presence felt by a fisherman in Seattle.

At last, I got a sure hit, and played the fish for nearly five minutes. Just
as the salmon was in sight, a few feet from the rock shore, the fish shook
off. My lure then caught a rock and broke. I took out my new knife and cut
some line. I wasn't paying attention, my mind on the fish that got away,
when I sliced through my finger. It was a clean cut, but deep. The knife I'd
bought to bleed salmon was effective only in bleeding me. 

Blood gushed out. For a few minutes, I felt like the Julia Child parody on
"Saturday Night Live," after the chef opens a big wound while cutting up
chicken. I had to hold the cut to keep it closed. 

That was it for me. As the tide rose, I stood on the shrinking base of the
rock, clutching a bloody finger as salmon jumped all around me, sunlight
gleaming off the city, a ferry horn blaring in the distance. I was fishless
in Seattle, and not unhappy. 

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